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Happy BIrthday Cloud! 14 years old- May 29, 2009

My birthday wish for Cloud is the same this year as every year: May you live your life with your family in freedom.

Ginger Kathrens--Volunteer Executive Director--The Cloud Foundation

Today is Cloud’s birthday – fourteen years ago he tottered out of the trees with his mother in front of my camera. Now Cloud is one of the most dominant band stallions in the Pryor Mountains. 
Unfortunately I am writing with some less than festive news to mark the occasion. The Bureau of Land Management has issued their Environmental Assessment and Herd Management Area Plan for Cloud’s herd in the Pryor Mountains. Despite all of your comments requesting that this herd be managed at genetically viable levels, BLM has only raised their allowable herd number from 95-105 up to 90-120 horses over one year of age. There are currently around 200 horses on the range over one year old and reducing them to this number would require a round up in which some 80 horses would lose their families and their freedom. (The round up is scheduled for August 30th of this year.) Allowing this HMAP to stand as is would result in the ultimate destruction of Cloud’s unique Spanish herd. To further suppress the population virtually all the mares returned to the range would be given a two-year contraceptive drug– the effects of which are still being studied in the wild.
Please continue to lobby your Representatives to pass H.R. 1018, the Restoring our American Mustang (ROAM) Act. We hope this Act will be voted on in the House soon and move quickly to the Senate.
 Another opportunity to stand up and speak for the preservation of our wild herds is the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board meeting on June 15th in Sacramento, California. Please join me there on behalf of our wild horse and encourage any friends you have in the area to come as well.